︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  



This is an old video portfolio.
For more recent work consider taking a look at my ---->> pdf portfolio


My name is Rosa Menkman and I work as a Dutch artist and researcher of resolutions, with a special focus on glitches, im/possible images, lost and unnamed colours and finally, the account of an encounter between
the Cycl 👁️ ps Wodan and the goddess of staircases 𓊍  IanaI (formerly known as the Angel of History).

Focusing on noise artifacts resulting from accidents in both analog and digital media, I aim to find new ways to understand and perceive through the use of, and interaction with, our black-boxed image processing technologies. 

As a compendium to this research, I published the Glitch Moment/um (INC, 2011), a book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts.

I further explored the politics of image resolutions in a second book titled Beyond Resolution (i.R.D., 2020). In this publication, I describe how the standardization of resolutions is not only a process that promotes efficiency, order and functionality, but also involves compromises and as a result, the obfuscation of alternative possibilities.

In 2019, I won the Collide Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which inspired my recent research in im/possible images that I consolidated in the im/possible images reader (published by the i.R.D. & Lothringer, with support from V2, 2022). And further expanded on this during my time at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) at Enter the Hyper-Scientific (2023), where I developed a Spectrum of Lost and Unnamed Colours.


From 2018 to 2020 I worked as substitute Professor Neue Medien & Visuelle Kommunikation at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Since 2023, I have been running the im/possible lab at HEAD Geneve. 

All class materials can be found here, I wish you <copy-it-right>
MOST OF MY (SOLO) SHOWS CAME WITH  A PUBLICATION:
 ︎ Order and Progress (2010) publication: Vernacular of File Formats
︎ i.R.D. (2015) publication: i.R.D.
︎ Behind White Shadows (2017) publication: BWS
︎ Shadow Knowledge (2020) publication: Beyond Resolution
︎ Im/Possible Images (2022) publication: Im/Possible Images Reader


RECENT WORKS:
* A SPECTRUM OF LOST AND UNNAMED COLOURS
* A COLLECTION OF COLLECTIONS FOLDED INTO A LIBRARY (2023)
* JPEG FROM A VERNACULAR OF FILE FORMATS, (2009 - 2010), REVISITATION WITH HIDDEN MESSAGE IN DCT (2023)

* REFRACTIONS in Light and Time (2023)
WHITEOUT video documentary / performance (2020 - 2022)

* IM/POSSIBLE IMAGES reader, 3D work w/ video and exhibition (2021-2023)

* DE/CALIBRATION TARGET (2023)
* DE/CALIBRATION ARMY prints and video (2020)
* SHREDDED HOLOGRAM ROSE (2023)
* BEYOND RESOLUTION Book (2020)
* UNRESOLVED data painting (2020)


RECENT VIDEO LECTURES:
A Collection of Collections inside a Library for the INC (2023)
Resolution Studies Lecture for MIT (2021)
Destitute Vision Lecture for NCAD (2021)
It takes more than the past to understand the archive video essay for Stedelijk Studies (2020)


RECENT FACILITATION:
To be released: OUTLAND ART MAGAZINE ON GLITCH
NOT.GLI.TC/H (Chicago, April 1st 2023)
NFTs and their Impact on Art Creation, Curation, and Commerce (Kassel, 22-23 July 2022)
IM/POSSIBLE SUMMER SCHOOL (W/ Luzi Gross, Munich, 2021)
 




This website was made possible with the financial support of the Stimuleringsfonds.nl (2018)
This site functions as a repository and portfolio of my artistic research.
Please <copy-it-right>

I am grateful to have received a basis stipend from the Mondriaan Fund (2018-2021) and just recently, again: 2023 - 2027!
 


︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  ︎︎︎︎︎  

AN ATLAS OF THE DESTITUTE OF VISION

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  

0000 — LOOKING INTO THE PAST, POWERLESSLY SEEING THINGS BREAK

Her eyes are staring, her mouth is open, her wings are spread. This is how one pictures the Angel of History. Her face is turned toward the past, where she perceives a chain of events: catastrophes piling wreckage upon wreckage. The Angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But as the pile of debris before her grows skyward, a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has caught her wings with violence, propelling her into a future to which her back is turned. This is the storm we call progress.
*[edited from:] Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History", Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken Books, 1969: 249.

The Angel of History is a protagonist borrowed from Walter Benjamin. I use her as a tool to write the evolving narrative of my own relationships with technology, research and art. I transpose Benjamin’s Angel onto the digital realm: her journey traverses a landscape covered in piles of obsolete technologies, discarded because the emergence of compromise, inherent to the endless cycle of digital “advancements.” But the Angel transitions from a historical observer to an active participant, exploring the artifacts left behind by progress,. As she moves away from Benjamin’s original account, she gradually evolves into Ianai — a female Janus — able to see both past and future, considerate of both the ethical and existential questions of progress,  at the helm of change.

The Angel of History first appears as a protagonist in the Collapse of PAL (2010). This live television performance marked the transition from the analog Phase Alternate Line television signal (PAL) to Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB). At this pivotal moment in time, the Angel articulates her desire to repair lost connections caused by the obsolescence of PAL, which is "just not good enough." The Angel mourns its disconnect as the end of an era of broadcasting technologies. Yet this moment also starts her journey through the perpetual cycles of digital collapse aka “progress”.


0001 — MAKING THINGS SEEN: FINDING INSIGHTS THROUGH ERROR   || MATERIALITY

In the initial Collapse, the Angel merely describes her experience, trying to make sense of disruptions caused by the advent of our new digital technologies. But as her journey continues, her role transforms into that of an explorer, delving deeper into the shifts and fractures characteristic of the digital. In Acousmatic Videoscapes (2008 - ...), the Angel sets out to adopt deeper insights, aiming to “peel off her eyelids and see inside the black box of technology,” to reveal filters that are normally hidden deep within its digital complexities.

A still from the source footage of the Collapse of PAL serves as the foundational image for the Vernacular of File Formats (A Guide to Databend Compression Design, 2010). In this work, the image was first transcoded using some of the most standard compression languages at the time (GIF, BMP, JPEG, etc.). These images were then deliberately glitched by introducing the same or similar disturbances into each data file. This process allows the normally invisible compression language to emerge onto the surface of the image, showcasing the hidden language of compression as a form of digital decay or transformation.


0011 — READING THE SHADOWS AND MAPPING IN/THE UNSEEN || GENEALOGY

The Angel organizes a Pique Nique Pour Les Inconnues (2020): As the Angel is now able to speak to any creature from the realms of image processing, she invites the lost and unacknowledged faces of colour test cards from the realms of image processing. The Angel orchestrates a collective performance of Paul McCartney's “We All Stand Together” and hints at the development of a movement: the i.R.D. (2015) and its De/Calibration Army (2019).

The Angel evolves from facilitator to activist for resolutions. JPEG Lena teaches her the art of syphoning (transcoding) DCTs (2015)—Discrete Cosine Transforms—a protocol fundamental to JPEG compression. This new way of reading and writing binds error to key, mapping each of the 64 distinct DCT blocks to the most commonly used glyphs of the Roman alphabet. A recipe allows her to steganographically embed errors on the surface of the image, as if she were writing in ru/i/nes. A new way of writing that not only alters visual data but also emphasizes the importance of the image processing pipeline, which is not just vertical but also acts as a stack that inscribes its trace evidence on its material witness.

The Angel suddenly recognizes a senior DCT teaching a junior DCT to SYPHON (2017)—to translate data from one realm of complexity to the next—A scene that unfolds like a contemporary echo of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland (1884): as junior and senior navigate the Realms of Compression Complexities (2017), built of artifacts like dither, lines, blocks, and finally wavelets and vectors, they hit the higher complexities of transcoding, resulting in their kernel panic. The Angel suggests a non-linear, illogical framework to decode their path, committing:

“This is not weird, nor is it madness. This is information! Unlike data, information spans over multiple dimensions. It moves upwards, not just northwards!”

An event that marks the first time the Angel actively advocates for an unconventional framework, enabling disparate forms of logic to function together, laying the groundwork for what becomes the basis of her institutions (i.R.D., 2015).


0100 — THE SEARCH FOR TOOLS TO SEE DIFFERENTLY || HABIT

In Xilitla (2013), the Angel navigates a non-linear poetic narrative set in a 3D environment reminiscent of the surrealistic garden of the same name (Xilitla, San Luis Potosi, Mexico). Here, the Angel's face has taken the shape of a Janus face, tumbling forward and backward as she ascends and descends a spiraling Staircase to Nowhere, extending endlessly upwards and downwards. During a particular path of descent, the Angel encounters a reflective image of herself flanked by a Spomenik (2017)—a monumental cairn of vectors that commemorate no particular time for no specific entity—and declares:

“I know her, but sometimes, her eyes bend back.” An encounter that may be considered as a prophecy.

In search of tools to not just see the unseen, but to see unconventionally, the Angel undertakes a steep climb. But during this ascend, a snow storm immerses her in a total Whiteout (2020). Oversaturated by the lack of vision, and faced with the impossibility to navigate, she is forced to learn about the plotting new lines, borders, and limits which finally make her categorize the im/possible images. A Binary Large OBject or BLOB of im/possible images (2021-2022) becomes home to a categorization of im/possibilities “that exist beyond the pastures of image processing.”

The Angel urges any interlocutor to venture inside the BLOB, which reveals that resolutions don’t just make things work, but always deploy an AXIS of compromise to whatever is rendered. From then on, the BLOB, an uncommitted shape textured with a black and white moire pattern, takes a spot next to the Spomenik, flanking the Angel as she keeps roaming the Staircase to Nowhere.

In her search (2022 - 2024), the Angel Ianai revisits the Tulgey Woods (2011), where she finds the last of Wodan’s Oaks. She learns about Wodan, the Germanic name for Odin, cyclopic God of Wisdom, who exchanged an eye for the sense of future vision, prompting her on a search to learn from the Cyclopses herself. With the aim to obtain a sense of future vision. Ianai learns about 4 generations of cyclopes, one of them a mesh network of dual corner reflectors, positioned in ascending and descending direction. As a result of the insights from this journey, Ianai evolves into an archaeologist from the future, digging through the layered sediments of algorithmic time, uncovering and reconstructing its lost, forgotten, or simply unseen ways, subsumed beyond its tipping points of progress.


0101 — SEEING ON ANOTHER || SCALE

The mesh that consists of the BLOB and Spomenik commits another object to its framework; a De/Calibration Target (2023). This Target (a 16x16 meter large rooftop painting that spells FF D8 in DCT, the start of a JPEG image marker) is only seen and indexed by satellites, to be distributed and visited online. On activation, the Target offers access to a cache of research about DCTs and JPEG compression, illustrating what happens when something exists outside the dimension of our system units of scale.

Ianai describes her recent visit to the i.R.D. (2015) and its De/Calibration Target (2023) and her hopes to recalibrate her Shredded Hologram Rose (2021).


0110 — SEEING THE UNRENDERED: BEYOND RESOLUTION || INSTITUTION
In A Spectrum of Lost and Un/Named Colours (2024), the media archaeologist from the future tells the story of the dual pollution of the rainbow (atmospheric rainbows have lost their vibrance due to pollution, while images of the rainbow generated by AI have lost their gradient spectrum due to dataset pollution of flags and emojis). With the help of a rainbow generator, Ianai intends to bring the experience of the full spectrum of colors back but also to move and name the colors that exist beyond what is currently humanly visible.

On the walls of Ianai’s cube hang posters documenting their transformation from Paul Klee’s painting into Ianai, a Deity of Rainbows and Staircases. Ianai’s image ascends and descends in a controlled version.


0111 — A NEW HOROLOGY AND ATLAS

From the Atlas of the Destitute of Vision, compiled by the Media Archaeologist from over 100 cycles from the future it becomes clear that the i.R.D. have created frameworks for lost and unknown ways of looking, seeing, and recognizing.

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎